State officials are investigating loopholes in the California education code that have allowed the director of a Los Angeles private school to continue in his post despite a child molestation conviction three years ago. In 1987, the director of the Institute of Islamic Studies, a school serving dozens of Muslim children in kindergarten through the 12th grade, was convicted of two counts of committing lewd acts on an 11-year-old girl.

State officials are investigating loopholes in the California education code that have allowed the director of a Los Angeles private school to continue in his post despite a child molestation conviction three years ago. In 1987, the director of the Institute of Islamic Studies, a school serving dozens of Muslim children in kindergarten through the 12th grade, was convicted of two counts of committing lewd acts on an 11-year-old girl.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, 83, a scholar of comparative religion and a leading proponent of interfaith dialogue who once headed Harvard's Center for the Study of World Religions. Born in Toronto and ordained as a Presbyterian minister, Smith earned a doctorate at Princeton University. He taught in India, England and Egypt before establishing the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal, where he taught from 1949 to 1963.

The head of an Islamic university in restive Aceh province was shot to death Saturday, police said. Two unidentified men shot Safwan Idris, 51, in the neck at his home on the campus of the State Institute of Islamic Studies on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, said Supt. Sayed Husaini. Safwan died at a hospital. The slaying brings to at least 120 the number of people killed in Aceh since a June 2 truce between separatist guerrillas and Indonesian troops.

"Let it burn," a voice from the police control room told a street patrol as a Muslim shop went up in flames. But don't torch Hindu property, came the order. That and other secretly taped police dispatches are at the heart of a court battle between police and a human rights group that accused police of taking part in last month's Hindu riots against Muslims.

The fate of tens of thousands ancient manuscripts in Mali remained uncertain Monday as French troops liberated the city of Timbuktu from Islamic insurgents who were said to have set fire to the library there. Timbuktu is the last major city occupied by the insurgents, who have held sway there for 10 months, imposing the strict Islamic version of religious law, including carrying out public executions and amputations for crimes. The city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was an especially vibrant center of Islamic thought in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.

Another man might hire a lobbyist. But Ysamur Flores, he will summon Chango. And summoning Chango, one of the 40 major deities of the secretive Afro-Cuban religion Santeria, is no humdrum chore. Prayers will be spoken and sacred symbols arranged, forming an altar, explained Flores, a Santeria priest. And an animal, preferably a male sheep, is needed. A knife will be plunged into the ram's neck.

At the height of the January riots here, when anti-Muslim mobs butchered and burned more than 750 people and nine days of anarchy reigned in India's most cosmopolitan city, Yakub Abdul Razak Memon stood in the smoldering shell of his own small shop and surveyed the horrors outside. He was 28, plump, with short black hair and a thick mustache.